Tom Morello Says Donald Trump Is ‘Raging Against the Machine’

While it is likely not too much of a surprise that Tom Morello has a negative view of President Donald Trump, the Prophets of Rage guitarist says it's important to take a look at how his rise to political prominence happened, laying some blame with both parties.

Speaking with NME in a new interview (seen above), Morello states, "While Trump is an abomination, I think it's important not to look at him independent of the system that produced him. It was years of these neoliberal policies that were supported by Clinton and Bush and Obama and the other Bush that caused the working class to really suffer, and they sent their kids overseas to fight in ridiculous, immoral wars."

The guitarist adds, "I come from Trump country — the small town in Illinois where I come from, Democrats don't even run, and the options [available] to people are [either] you join the Army, you work at Walmart [or] you sell meth. They looked at a broken system, and Trump provided some of the easiest answers, which is it's the Mexicans' fault, it's the Muslims' fault — that sort of racist way of dividing and conquering the working class that has had success before and certainly has had success with this demagogue."

Morello says that voters should be ready to share their conviction come voting time, hopefully not overlooking some of the falsehood and demagoguery of the current administration. "It's one more reason why people should not be silent in their vocations," he said. "There's the standard operating procedure of the parties, of the newspapers, of the talking heads in the media, and then there's this wildcard Trump who is raging against the machine in a way that is attractive simply because it stands in stark contrast to this spoonfed version of history and society that you get. It's very important, if you have an outsider view that differs from that, like I do, I think it's crucially important, whether you're a journalist, whether you're a cameraman, whatever your occupation is, to not leave your convictions behind in your vocation and to enter that debate. We all have a megaphone of different sizes to speak up."

You can also bet that Morello will continue to voice his opinion. “You don’t give your right of free speech away when you pick up a guitar," says the musician. "When you have some sort of platform, you have a microphone that they don’t have, and so on social media they try to even the odds by telling you to shut up. One thing I will not be doing is shutting up any time soon.”

Morello admits that he's not waiting for "a Messiah," stating, "I don't think it's gonna be one voice [that leads to change] ... The way that change has happened in my country, progressive, radical and even revolutionary change has always come from below — always come from below. Whether it's women getting a right to vote or desegregating lunch counters, or even globally, whether it was the dismantlement of the Berlin Wall of the end of apartheid, those things happened because people no different from the people watching this or reading this — people with no more power, no more courage, no more intellect than you out there — stood up in their time to change the world. That's how the world changes."

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